A terminal of hybrid system architecture is, for example, a Personal Computer (PC) in which at least one further system is embedded into a conventional PC having one system. The different systems can function cooperatively to achieve their respective advantages. Currently, a typical PC of hybrid system architecture has a master system (e.g., Vista) and a slave system (e.g., WinCE) integrated therein. The master system and the slave system can share a keyboard, a network adapter, a display device, a memory device, an audio unit and the like. During operation of the PC of such hybrid system architecture, the master system and the slave system can be switched therebetween as required.
In an existing PC of hybrid system architecture, the master system and the slave system each have system state management software which operates when the respective system is active and is configured to record state information of the system. When a state of one of the systems is to be switched, the state management software performs a switching operation by driving respective hardware, such that the state of the current system can be switched based on the recorded state information. However, when both of these systems are inactive, the system state information of the inactive systems cannot be recorded due to the inoperability of its system state management software. Thus, system switching cannot be performed until the inactive systems are both woken up.